Once upon a time there lived a barber, who was very self-confident on his abilities and qualities. He was a famous barber in his locality, thus he was able to find a number of customers daily. To assist him in his work, he decided to hire an assistant. Eventually, after much research, he was able to find a teenager and hired him on daily wages.

As the customers began to increase, the barber realised that he had taken a wise decision to employ the teenager. Once, when he was sitting with his assistant drinking tea, he offered the boy a five rupee note and a 10 rupee note and asked him to choose one.

The teenager first hesitated, but then took the five rupee note. The barber was amazed at his apparent foolishness and laughed.

Later on, he exhibited the same drama in front of one of his customer to show the stupidity of his assistant. The barber offered five rupee note and a 10 rupee note and the assistant took the five rupee note as earlier. The barber then repeated this with a new five rupee note and the same 10 rupee note, the boy still took the five rupee note. Now it became his habit to welcome every customer by showing him the drama. Soon, all of his customers had witnessed the slow-wittedness of the assistant.

Once, when the barber had gone out of the shop for some work, one curious customer came to the assistant to ask him the reason for acting so dumb. He questioned the boy, “Do you like to be fooled in front of everyone. Do not you know that 10 rupees has more value than five rupees?”

The boy replied, “Well, I don’t like to be fooled in front of everyone, but I do like to fool my master in front of everyone.”

The customer was puzzled and felt that the boy was surely as dumb as his master considered him. However, he continued; “How can you say you are fooling everyone when everyone says you are a fool?”

The boy explained, “Now listen to me. Had I taken the 10 rupee note the first time the barber offered me, he would have never offered me again. Actually, I fool the barber every time he offers me money. He is arrogant and has never thought that he can also be the dumb in this case. He is blinded by his self-confidence and carelessly gives me five rupees every time only to make me look dumb in front of everyone. And in this way, I have earned 100 rupees till now.”

The boy ended with this question and a grin, “So tell me, am I dumb or the barber?”

The customer was pleased by the wisdom of the young boy and patted his back.

So kids, we should always evaluate our actions to know whether the accusation we are making about someone is true or not. Moreover, we should never be overconfident of our abilities as there is always room for improvement.

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 19th, 2020